Ontario nursing home inspectors are so overwhelmed with abuse and other complaints that many of the government’s rigorous new annual inspections will be delayed as long as five years, says the public service union.

The Ministry of Health has 74 inspectors charged with enforcing strict rules that were supposed to protect the 77,000 elderly nursing home residents. Those inspectors do complaint investigations and the new, detailed annual investigations introduced two years ago.

In 2011, the ministry received 2,719 complaints from staff, families or other sources. They include critical incidents, such as sexual or physical assault, and important but less urgent issues, such as complaints about unappealing food.

Rick Janson of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union said the investigation team needs to be boosted to deal with new investigations and the annual home inspection, which picks up on problems before they become serious. Some complaint investigations can be delayed for months due to the overload.

Janson said there is an informal goal of completing 120 annual inspections per year. Ontario has 630 nursing homes.

“At that rate, it will take five years to do annual inspections on each home,” he said.

“Clearly, there is not enough staff, but obviously the government is not looking at this — they just want to balance the budget.”

Janson said OPSEU is in the midst of talks with the ministry because its contract expires on Dec. 31.

The annual inspections were supposed to provide an in-depth examination of each home, with a resident-first focus.

Jane Meadus, a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, said the government promised that each home would be given an in-depth inspection each year.

But now, Meadus said, the ministry says the new nursing home act only requires that a home has “an inspection” of any kind (mostly generated by an individual complaint) as long as it is done annually.

“That means we are leaving it up to the homes to regulate themselves,” Meadus said. “If there are bad apples out there, they will be allowed to continue unchecked.”

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